Will the last patriot to leave California please turn out the lights...

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Victor Davis Hanson's "Koreana"

All around super historian Victor Davis Hanson analyzes the savage goons of North Korea, and argues for an effective US Response:

One comment in particular struck me, where Mr. Hanson argues for a US military pullout from South Korea: (my emphasis in boldface and italics)

To work with South Korea, we need to start withdrawing troops to Pusan—and well beyond. Much of the present mess arose from the appeasement of the Sunshine policy—in part, fueled by the revisionism of Korean ingrate leftists who rewrote the Korean War in populist terms of American imperialism and their own victimization. This was, in part, due to Korean nationalism that envisioned an eventual pan-Korea state birthed by slow and insidious osmosis from the south; and, in part, a result of strategic complacence of a half-century made possible by American subsidies and deployments. It made sense to garrison Americans on the DMZ when Seoul was weak and nascent, but not now when its population and economy dwarf the North’s. Getting America off the DMZ would give us more strategic options through air power, and wake up the South Koreans, reminding them that cheap triangulation with the United States has real costs. They can either play Churchill or Chamberlain—but it’s their call, not ours, since we have wider worries protecting Japan and Taiwan that transcend South Korea’s Sunshine nonsense.

While the "Sunshine Policy" is wrong, the motive in boldface and italics behind it is certainly not. America should do whatever it can to help North Korea go the way of East Germany.

Korean leftists who claim that the USA stands in the way of reunification are brainwashed dupes, and are just like our own brainwashed leftist dupes who rewrote ALL of American history in leftover communist terms and focused on their own victimization.

Nevertheless, reunification, following the collapse of the evil Kim regime, should be a stated US policy goal.

Meanwhile, Cap'n Ed notes that the South Korean people appear to be wising up.